News

A Life in the Day: Michael Wilkinson

After suffering a serious stroke a year ago, Michael Wilkinson, 51, a languages teacher and retired RAF training officer, has been a patient at the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in Putney, south London, for seven months. He and his wife, Carol, have a home in Hythe and grown-up children, Alan and Michelle. He wrote this column on a computer

"As usual, I am woken by the cold sensation of my medication being pumped into my stomach through my Peg, a plastic tube that I've had in since last December. In November I suffered a brainstem stroke that left me unable to control my body from the neck down. It happened without warning: one moment I was supervising a student, the next I was face down on the floor, paralysed and unable to speak. I felt completely calm — I knew what had happened, as both my mother and her mother had suffered strokes. I was more worried about my son: he was due to meet me after school.

I look at the time displayed on my video. It is 6.38 — more than two hours to wait until they get me up. I shouldn't be so impatient, but I had two months in intensive care at my last hospital, where I